Hallo, this is another journal of adventure games I have played through over the past few months. This post will cover the games; Secret Files: Tunguska, Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, Secret Files 3, Secret Files: Sam Peters, and Return to Mysterious Island. I'll also have notes at the end about some patterns/trends/styles I am picking up on as I play more adventure games.
Wanting to play something 'simple': I started this lot wanting to play stuff that was a bit less involved and 'heady', without the need for note taking, and maybe a bit untintentionally funny due to jank. I just felt like putting a bit of distance between playing some of the big well-renowned series', like Syberia and the rest of Myst, in the hopes that my time with them will be more impactful. The Atlantis series caught my eye in this respect, with it's incomprehensible promotional screenshots (Have we unearthed a parrot? and this sky face).
Attempting Atlantis I wrote briefly about this game in the last journal post, but want to expand on it a bit more here. The Atlantis series uses a pre-rendered 3D style but allows a 360° view from each walking point, which chops up the rendering at times, and the characters have that early 3D smoothness to them. I installed and played it for about an hour, it's one of those late 90s games with no framerate cap so on modern computers it runs too fast. It was also SO immediately funny, I spoke to a guard early on while trying get to my quarters and he said no, blocking my way. So I walked around inspecting everything else I could but seemed to have softlocked my progession. Turns out the solution was to just talk to the second guard standing right next to him who lets you through with no issue (???). I then got to the quarters and a rude guy walks in, says the Queen is missing and asks me to pour him a drink. I poured the drink, he left, and another person says "you really should have stood up to that bully", which was followed by my first game over screen (the sky face). Anyway, there is a fan-made mod that is apparently essential to make this game work properly on modern computers, but it wouldn't install without GOG Galaxy (which isn't on Linux) so I put this series aside to try other fixes later (getting an older version of the mod, or running the game in 86box or DOSbox should work). After attempting Atlantis I decided to try the Secret Files games.
Secret Files: Tunguska - This series has no unwinnable situations, so you can never get softlocked by making the 'wrong' choice. They also have a search feature that will reveal anything on screen you may have missed inspecting or picking up. There's a charm to it's interface, the little moleskine inventory bar at the bottom, and the journal book menu/story tracker. The story is obviously focused on the Tunguska catastophe, with the usual 'cover-up' intrigue and alien stuff that's attached to fiction surrounding it. It was expectedly trope-y and of it's time (2008), but engaging enough while taking your character(s) to a dozen different places across the world. Solid adventure game stuff, the usual fare of; disguises, scratch-my-back errand running, totally ruining NPCs lives to progress story, betrayals, and inconceivable combinations of items to build ludicrous contraptions. Visually this whole series does a mix of isometric views with 3D sprites on static highly detailed backgrounds that look great. The english voice cast was not bad, there are some lines that you can tell were recorded at a different time or place though with a big difference in acoustics. They also do a comedically narrated 'what happened to them' credits covering most NPCs, followed by an in-character 'bloopers' reel which was so scripted and forced that it kinda came back around to being ironically funny. Fun romp.
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis - Visually identical to the first game, released a year later, kinda sauceless. Totally new english voice cast, which I get isn't always a deliberate choice so I just benefit-of-the-doubt away how jarring it is after a bit of gameplay. There were some performances paired with characters that felt like they were designed in a lab to be as annoying as possible (the kid and Sam Peters). The story had this thing that I hate where whats happening is extremely obvious, but the otherwise 'intelligent' characters are oblivious for the sake of pacing. Secret 'religious' cabal doing 'natural' disasters after 'predicting' them. It doesn't continue the story of the last game at all (which WAS interesting), there's less locations, and WAY more inventory crap. There's a point where you wash up on a shore and can clearly see at least 20 items in the scene, followed by a sinking feeling of how much work (in a game) you're going to have to do in building outrageous shit to move on. Skippable.
Secret Files 3 - Actually a continuation of the first game's story, taking the lore further and grander in interesting ways (my favourite kind of sequel). Does more ancient history + aliens stuff, international conspiracy with betrayals, and a bit of 'chosen one' with dream communications. This was all pleasantly surprising after the second game. Updated mobile-friendly interface with a similar layout to the old, an icon/panel artstyle reminiscent of Civilization 5-6, and a 3D room main menu screen that is personalised after a quiz (kinda weird, but interesting). Played it in one sitting, only goes for about 5 hours. If Secret Files 1 was enjoyed, this is more of that.
Secret Files: Sam Peters - The worst character from the worst game in the series gets their own SUB TWO HOUR LONG game. She is slightly less annoying and racist here. I liked the Sasabonsam stuff, but would be better served just reading about the folklore. Should've been a free DLC, not a game with a regular retail price of >$10.
Return to Mysterious Island - A young sailor doing a round-the-world voyage crashes on the shore of a (THE) Mysterious Island. She then proceeds to eat a whole fish, 3 coconuts, 2 crabs, 4-5 oysters, 4 turtle eggs, and 2-3 bird eggs to 'get her strength back' (???). The title confused me, but it is revealed to be the Jules Verne Mysterious Island island. Actually does an engaging job creating a modern story on top of that book, where Verne was in league with Captain Nemo and lied about the island being volcanoed so that Nemo could live there in peace. The inventory has 7 tabs of 30 slots... I filled about 4 tabs during play. This was overwhelming/frustrating at the start, but the ludicrous contraptions (non-pejorative) were mostly funny. Stuff like baking a pie to send a monkey to sleep, or moulding and firing bricks to build a staircase, and before long you are inexplicably carrying a metric tonne of materials. You also help heal a monkey who becomes your companion, and essentially a special item in your inventory (monkey + knife = monkey holding a knife). The visuals were interesting too, a pre-rendered 3D 360° view from walking points thing, but with 'cutscenes' done in a slideshow of hand illustrations, more akin to older books. Worth a visit.
the rest of this is just further random notes, not about any particular game...
Early 3D Graphical Styles
I'm noticing a few distinct styles for how 3D or near-3D was achieved and projected on a flat screen, prior to the full 3D engine era.
- Cyan Studios/Myst Style Directional PR3D: pre-rendered/recorded 3D presented as static images and quicktime videos, with walking anchor points and a fixed directional view. Kind of like being inside a square, and you can only percieve one side at a time. This likely came out of necessity, a 1993 release of Myst targeting Macintoshes of the time, but creates a level of detail and immersion that became THE style of the Myst series. Downsides are; you can sometimes see the outline of a video not lining up when something in a scene 'moves', you are primed into turning four cardinal directions and clicking specific spots on screen so it's easy to miss something on a different angle (the tree by the cabin, and the mechanical age rotation controls in Myst), and moving through these static views quickly can be nauseating (Myst is small enough that it's fine, Riven had this effect on me though).
- 360° view PR3D: pre-rendered/recorded 3D with a full 360° view around walking anchor points. Kind of like movement in modern VR with just a headset. So far I've only seen this in French developed adventure games (AdFrenchure games?), but I'm not certain it is endemic to that scene. It feels like it would be a step up from the directional Myst style, but it isn't always executed as well. Downsides are; as you move your view the background image blurs and loses detail which can be nauseating (was for me on Atlantis but not RTMI), and you now have a much larger surface area to inspect at every walking point (a lot more meticulous clicking to find all unobvious objects).
- Various Isometric Projections: aka the 3/4 view, static background with sprites moving around on top, viewed from an elevated side angle to portray a 3D space. Think old Fallout, Diablo and RTS games. While isometric is the general term for any angled projection like this in gaming, most games more accurately have a 'diametric' view (slightly lower angle elevation). A lot of isometric adventure games will also have multiple unique angles for certain scenes and areas, bringing the camera closer and lower in small spaces for example. The sprites can be done in various styles too like; illustrated cartoons/pixel art, flat directional video recordings of real actors (Noctropolis), 3D art overlayed atop motion captured actors (Blade Runner), or in modern times these can be true 3D assets in a 3D engine (Disco Elysium)
Next Up
Not sure, I might attempt some fixes for Atlantis 1, but I am also feeling like finishing out the Myst series (III, IV, and V) and am keen to try the Star Trek DS9 game. Might be a while though, am busy in the adventure of life, lmao.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!